


The Greatest Life and the Stickiest Leaves

by Byacolate



Category: overwatch
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragon Genji Shimada, Faun Zenyatta, Faunyatta, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Pining, Pining: Extreme Edition, Shimada Genji's Affection Erection, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 12:59:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9272825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: To the tune of wooden chimes and copper bells, the dragon slumbers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My part of a little trade with the extraordinary [russet-red](http://russet-red.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. Their [Faunyatta au](http://russet-red.tumblr.com/tagged/faun-au) is everything to me.

“This must be a habit of yours,” Zenyatta says, his face hovering above Genji’s, “rolling about in pine needles.” 

 

His fingers sift carefully through Genji’s hair, navigating around his horns. The round curve of his skull blocks the sun above, surrounding him in a halo of white-gold light. Genji’s quite comfortable to be preened like an ape there, nestled in his lap. 

 

“That’s how we shed our winter skin, you know.” He closes his eyes as Zenyatta pulls another needle from his mane. “In the conifers. The easiest way is to find a very, very old one - they’ve got taller, rougher bark, you see - and just coil around it like a snake and inch up and around until it all sloughs off.”

 

“Are you teasing me?” Zenyatta wonders, checking behind Genji’s long ears. “Do dragons truly shed their skins?”

 

“Even the greatest wyrms are still serpents, Zenyatta.” He cracks one eye open to meet Zenyatta’s, warm and wide and curious, and he can’t help but grin. “But… yes, I’m teasing.”

 

Zenyatta's lips part when he smiles, stretched taut over his teeth. “I thought you might be.”

 

“We do like conifers though,” he says when Zenyatta resumes grooming him, just to hear the low ring of his laugh. His mouth twists in the slightest wince when Zenyatta pulls a particularly sticky bunch of needles from just over his temple.

 

“I had noticed.”

 

A pair of sparrows chatter in the trees high above, and a soft breeze brushes thousands of new leaves against one another in springtime song. The tinkle of a dozen tiny bells in the branches of Zenyatta’s tree come fainter still, almost imperceptible from the sweet high notes of birdsong. With a few last passes through his hair, Zenyatta fondly pinches Genji’s ear. “I have finished my task. You are free of fir needles.”

 

Genji sighs and laces his fingers together over his chest. 

 

“That is good to hear. Now I am clean and  _ very _ comfortable.”

 

The corners of his lips turn up when Zenyatta hums, the sound wholly amused. “Shall I indulge you in a nap, great and powerful dragon lord?”

 

“I thank you for the offer!” Genji crosses one outstretched leg over the other, his tail thumping once against the moss surrounding Zenyatta’s tree. “And I accept.”

 

To the tune of wooden chimes and copper bells and the smooth drag of fingertips over his scalp, the dragon slumbers.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

“Brother,” he sighs, draping himself over Hanzo’s back. “Brother, I love him.”

 

Hanzo doesn’t so much as grunt in response, picking over the prayers left at the temple with his great claws. He only chooses this form to coil within the length of the small temple when the priestesses have swept it clean, the vain bastard. 

 

_ “Honorable _ older brother -”

 

“You love him,” Hanzo intones, setting one group of prayers aside to claw through another set. “So I have heard.”

 

“Maybe your other head will speak to me with more compassion,” Genji grumbles, throwing an arm over his eyes. He can practically feel the shift of Hanzo’s second head.

 

“I am always compassionate to your personal tragedies, you great green fool.” 

 

“But you don’t understand,” Genji sighs again, dropping the arm from over his eyes to stare at the high ceiling of the lake temple. “Hanzo, he’s perfect.”

 

“He is a faun.”

 

“A  _ perfect _ faun.”

 

Both of Hanzo’s heads snort in tandem. The muscles along his long spine shift beneath cobalt scales as he sets the prayers aside. “A base, earthly creature with whom you’ve fixated yourself.”

 

“I would  _ love _ to get base and earthly with him.”

 

Hanzo makes a noise of disgust, and Genji doesn’t even try to dodge the tail that whaps him across the chest. “Speak of this again, and I will throw you in with the ashes of the prayers.”

 

“Prude.” Genji slides off of Hanzo’s back to his heels and crouches there, examining the prayer slips Hanzo has set aside. “You have never met him. If you knew him like I do, you’d know what I mean. He’s the opposite of base or earthly. He is  _ ethereal, _ Hanzo. Transcendent. From another realm, beyond anything you or I know.”

 

“We are unto gods,” Hanzo reminds him coolly, tapping a long curved claw against the pile of prayers remaining. 

 

“And yet neither you nor I could touch the celestial plane from whence he’s surely come.”

 

“You are a fool in love,” Hanzo snorts, rolling aside just enough to make Genji fall back onto his ass. “And so you say foolish, lovely things. I wish you would say them to somebody else.  _ Anybody _ else.” His tail swishes dangerously close to Genji’s face. “Your godly faun, perhaps.”

 

Genji shifts forms and to prove his despair, flops bodily beside Hanzo. The gust caused by his great collapse scatters one pile of prayers across the cramped temple. The other, Hanzo holds down with a massive paw, both heads turning to glare at him.

 

“I am  _ trying,” _ Genji moans.

 

“What you are trying is my patience.”

 

“I have done everything, Hanzo. Last spring I brought him the nectar of ten-thousand cherry blossoms. Twice, I have written him poetry in the sky. Just last month when he bested me in combat, I asked for his hand.  _ Eternally.” _ He rolls onto his back and claws at the ceiling with a pathetic whine. “He thought it was a joke.”

 

“Hmm.” Hanzo picks through the last of the prayers. “Perhaps it is because you are a disingenuous person.”

 

“Don’t mischaracterize me when I’m at my lowest!” Genji squawks, flailing on his back like a flipped turtle. “Comfort me, Brother.”

 

After several long silent moments of nothing but Hanzo flipping through scraps of paper and the distant lapping of the lake against the rocky shore, Hanzo's tail comes to rest over Genji's exposed belly. "Come," he growls, getting to his feet. "Gather the scattered prayers. We will burn them together, and then we will hunt for something impressive enough to woo your mate-elect."

 

Genji's stomach swoops at the sound of that, like he's rolled and dipped mid-flight.

 

“Brother,” he cries, knocking bodily into Hanzo. 

 

Sure, he has to gather Hanzo’s stack of prayers too, but honestly? Worth it for the scales of the legendary giant catfish which, once burnished until they shine, fill Zenyatta’s eyes with wonder.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

“You’re the light of my life,” Genji wheezes. Little white stars are still bursting in front of his eyes when Zenyatta laughs quietly, taking a hoof off of Genji’s chest. 

 

“You have the most fascinating reactions to being thrown to the ground,” he says, his smile nothing short of angelic. Genji takes his hand without a word with Zenyatta extends it, allowing himself to be pulled back up. “Shall we try again?”

 

Genji scrubs a hand through his hair to sweep away any errant blades of grass. “Dragons are immortal,” he says, his body positioning itself back into the proper stance for hand to hand sparring, “but I would happily let you put me in my grave.”

 

Zenyatta’s eyes crinkle up at the corners when he laughs, and Genji’s mouth goes dry as he lets the yellow sash slip from his shoulder to tie it firmly about his waist. Half bared to the dappled sunlight, Zenyatta moves into his own position. “I do not think we will take this match so far. Come for me.”

 

“I am  _ trying,” _ Genji grumbles, and attacks. 

 

Genji is an accomplished fighter - quick, nimble, cunning. Deadly in a real fight. Behind all of his speed and dexterity lies a wealth of raw power, the likes of which most mortals can scarcely comprehend. 

 

And yet, none of that keeps Zenyatta from knocking him on his ass in a sparse handful of moves. 

 

“I have learned these parts of you, Genji,” he’s said, and swept Genji’s knees out from under him.

 

“I know how you move,” he’s said, swiftly matching Genji step for step with enough tedium to lower his guard before using Genji's overestimation of his own skill to knock him to the forest floor. 

 

“I must strike before you find your momentum, or it will be me at a loss,” he’s said, feinting from a _false_ feint so artfully that Genji tripped over his own legs.

 

“The child of the forest still has a few tricks up his sleeve,” he’s said, luring Genji into tricky territory just long enough to trip him over a winding tree root.

 

_“Marry me,”_ Genji’s begged from the dirt looking up, time and time again. And every time, Zenyatta simply smiles. Lends Genji a hand. Brushes bits of flora from his person and urges him to try again. 

 

It’s been months. It has been  _ years. _ Genji wonders which weaver of fate he’s offended so terribly to make Zenyatta deaf to his affections. Perhaps all of them.

 

Zenyatta turns nimbly on his hooves, and in the flash of a second - the barest hint of time - Genji’s eyes catch the flicker of Zenyatta’s tail. That’s all the distraction Zenyatta needs to roundhouse kick him across the sternum. With a grunt of surprise more than pain, Genji slams back against a tree. Even winded, Genji presses the palms of his hands against the tree at his back to propel himself away, but Zenyatta’s momentum carries him around again to swing once more with his leg. 

 

Rather than deal a devastating blow to his gut, Zenyatta’s hoof plants itself against Genji’s throat, effectively pinning him in place. To approach with such force and land with enough delicacy not to harm, but simply to pin… Zenyatta’s control is unimaginable. 

 

“I have you again, Genji.”

 

Genji swallows, feels the swell of his adam’s apple against Zenyatta’s hoof. 

 

“I concede,” he breathes, desperately reaching within his scrambled brain for something to say. He has no bluster left. “I have no choice. You’re amazing.”

 

Zenyatta smiles beatifically, and the pressure on Genji’s throat starts to disappear. Before Zenyatta can pull it away entirely, Genji grabs his ankle. Holds him in place. Zenyatta blinks.

 

“Genji?”

 

The tawny fur covering the fore of Zenyatta’s legs is somewhat coarse, thick and sleek beneath Genji’s palm. The fur at the back, where his thumb nestles, is far softer. Fluffy, like his distracting tail. He wants to draw his hands over Zenyatta’s form, discover new and wonderful things about him. He wants to know if the base of Zenyatta’s antlers are are as thick as his, if he likes the hard press of fingers to dig sensation around them to trickle down his spine; he wonders if instead they’re quite soft, sensitive to the gentlest touch. He wants to pet through the fur at his center where the color pales, wants to disarm him. He wants…

 

“Hey, Zenyatta,” he rasps. “Keep me forever.”

 

Zenyatta’s laugh fills the air as the summer wind does, warm and soft enough to touch. When he pulls his leg away, Genji lets him go.

 

“I will keep you until we part,” he says, coming one step closer to wipe a smudge of dirt from the bare flesh of Genji’s throat, “as I always do.”

 

And for now… for now, Genji supposes, that will have to be enough.

 

“One more time, Master Faun,” he says, grinning up at the warmth of Zenyatta’s nearness. “I think I can best you this time.”

 

Zenyatta smiles back, catching Genji’s chin with his fingertips as he lingers for a moment longer. 

 

“I welcome you to try.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tossed in a lil bit of Japanese mythos in there for flavor. Title from Linying's "Sticky Leaves" which is.... my personal Genyatta anthem..........
> 
> Inquire about fic requests [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/ask)  
> Tumblr: [wardencommando](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).  
> Battle.net ID: byacolate#1589


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